she’s gonna be so relieved

how are you posting from prison?

A person’s relationship with their life is an interesting thing philosophically. You can’t consent to it, and most of us feel you can’t easily give it up either.

I don’t believe this myself but you could rationally argue that having life and being required to keep living is a violation of your agency as a human being.

This sounds the same as “Starfield becomes fun after 500 hours” to me, doesn’t really sell it. I spend enough of my day trying to rise above mundanity.

I still had this in my clipboard from an earlier comment:

"The son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work–though not always even that --only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine.

We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger."

The Conquest of Bread

That betrays a lack of understanding about leftism. Government control over the economy is one way, yes. But your two options aren’t public dictator and private dictator.

Worker coops, syndicated unions (anarcho-syndicalism), anarcho-communism, gift economy…

Within the confines of the system you can also balance power quite a bit with UBI, mandated worker councils, worker representation on the company board of directors, etc.

As long as people are not allowed to fend for themselves because everything is privatized and commodified and you need to work for someone else to stay alive then you will not have freedom, a free market that retains that power dynamic just gives your employer even more ownership over you.

The government exists as a check on the power of huge corporations in this model (and is required to enforce private property in the first place). Who stops the richest company from picking winners and losers? Who stops companies from buying up their competition then cranking up prices? You need a framework to keep the market “free” in the first place.

Anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron, right-libertarianism is an oxy moron.

The problem is capitalism, full stop. There’s no good and bad kind, there’s just capitalism. An owning class dictating over a working class isn’t freedom.

You don’t need private ownership over the means of production to have trade and markets and productivity.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

Maybe you can’t think of them but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

“Free and open markets” work in theory, lol.

Private ownership over the means of production and allowing people to hoard capital will ALWAYS concentrate wealth and will ALWAYS produce an oligarchy.

You just unironically made a “capitalism hasn’t actually been tried yet” post in a thread where you’re on the “communism and socialism never work” position.

The irony is delicious

lol maybe those kids can shitpost instead and you can pick up a gun. Do you feel good forcing a mother to send her teen son into trench warfare?

Thanks for finally inspiring me to block this cesspool. You’re a scumbag.

Removed by mod

Then go fight. Where’s your answer to that?

Go die instead of some kid. Anti-imperialists used to have balls. Go fight.

Yes the state you were born in is your family and you must defend them like your daughter.

The political body that happened to be in control by force of the territory where your parents fucked owns your soul and can send you to your death when you have barely finished puberty and aren’t even done developing your brain.

The arbitrary social construct of “the state” is a higher form of power that not only can (in the ability sense) but morally must order children to die to defend itself.

Anyone trying to take their family and leave the warzone is a criminal and must be killed. That land must be defended, those politicians have graciously let you live for too long.

You go fight and die in Ukraine, if enough of you did they wouldn’t be sending their kids. You go and do it, I’ll pay for your plane ticket.

there’s no room for this kind of nuance in this community, it’s a bunch of what I can only describe as rabid liberals.

oh I must be a Trump supporting Russia man for saying that.

It’s funny how they’re all choosing to ignore that they can go fight in Ukraine right now. I wonder why they aren’t?

It’s ok to order 18 year olds to do it for them though because “that’s what’s right.”

Yeah, easy for them to say.

I wonder where they’ll draw the line. By the same arguments we should be drafting women and children old enough to hold a gun.

They should all fight and die for their country shouldn’t they? Everyone owes their life to the arbitrary governing body of the region they were born in. They own you and should be able to send you to your death. How liberal.

Yes everyone you don’t like is a Russian agent.

You haven’t answered why you aren’t going to go fight

Maybe we’ll meet on the battlefield ;)

Hey by the way did you hear Hamas forces people to stay in unsafe parts of Gaza as human shields. It’s so evil when the government forces civilians into danger when they could be escaping.

The choice isn’t yours when there’s a draft. If it’s so noble to die defending your state (not people, state) then it should be no problem getting enough volunteers.

Forcing people to fight for their government is wrong. Maybe some are ok with surrender over risking their life, maybe some are staunch pacifists, maybe some feel their lives won’t change very much under new leadership and would prefer to live.

Sending teens into a bloodbath by force isn’t good no matter how you try to spin it. Yes the alternative might be losing, but that is their choice.

You should go fight, they’re accepting foreign volunteers. You go do what you’re asking these children to do. It’s the right thing, isn’t it?

no I mean you need to learn about burden of proof

Man they really need to fix the education system

A general strike would stop project 2025 in its tracks

While true, I understand why some people choose not to vote or vote third-party. It’s like the trolley problem, and genocide is a pretty damn good thing to care about, especially when it’s people you identify with getting genocided.

My point was that if liberals joined the left in direct action even outside of elections then our choices would be better in the first place. Voting is the least you can do, and for most rabid Lemmy liberals that go around punching left constantly it’s THE ONLY THING they do.

If they joined the left, we’d all be punching back together. Instead they say “it’s just a little genocide, the other guy is worse, just hold your nose and vote instead of protesting and taking direct political action so we can all go back to doing nothing for 4 more years. You are the problem for being politically engaged out of the voting booth.”